Routines

waking up
before my father
in my father’s house
at sixty:

Sabicas playing softly 
before seven AM.

sitting upright
on a half made bed
wondering if it’s too early
to pad softly downstairs,
leave the house,
go get coffee for us both.

nearly forty years since the last time 
I slept here,
and so much has changed.

the music is not rock.
I’m not thinking about how to sneak out
to go get my car
from where I left it
at the bar.

everyone in the house is old
and fragile, in one way or another.

downstairs my father sleeps
waiting for my mother 
to come home from the hospital
and resume their routine.

somehow, 
here I am again

lonely,
worrying.

somehow,
as if I was back
at the beginning,

a new poem.